This week in Brexitland, January 12, 2023

How Matthew Goodwin, a Brexiter pollster and commentator, convinced me that instead of taking 25 years to rejoin the EU, it may take us less than a decade

Despite being passionately anti-Brexit, I have been pessimistic about the length of time it will take us to rejoin the EU for some time now. After June 2016, I quickly came to the conclusion that a second referendum wasn’t a great idea - Brexit, sadly, had to happen. I figured then that Brexit would reveal itself as a mistake over the course of many years; a sort of slow puncture of the whole concept taking place in front of our eyes. As this happened, I predicted, more and more people would slowly realise the benefits of rejoining the European Union, particularly as younger people came of voting age. But it would be unhurried, this process, probably taking a quarter of a century at least to play out in full.

I thought this would be a slow affair for several reasons. One is that I figured there is a chunk of people who need to give Brexit a decent amount of time to prove itself. This, incidentally, is a slice of the electorate that Brexiters of all stripes have spent 0% of their time thinking about. They figure the public is split between FPBE types and rabid Brexiters, when in fact a massive slice of the populace almost certainly has the following apply to them:

1. They figure because we voted Leave in 2016, it is important Brexit is given a real try.

2. However, they expect notable and obvious good to come from it and if they don’t get that, they will be deeply disappointed.

3. This disappointment could become something significant and turn into a desire to rejoin the EU or at the very least, for the worst of Brexit to be ameliorated as quickly as possible.

Again, I figured the time scale for the whole Brexit process to play out would be about 25 years. Until very recently, that is. Something came along last week and convinced me that perhaps we could rejoin the EU in something more like 10 years instead. And oddly enough, what made me change my mind on this was the arguments and polling of an ardent Brexiter.

Matthew Goodwin is a professor of politics at the University of Kent. He is part of a group of academics that I would describe as “superstar professors” - lecturers who in addition to the high quality research they produce, are also excellent public speakers, know how to use mainstream media to get their ideas across effectively, and can write well for a lay audience. Tim Bale and Anand Menon immediately spring to mind as others in this category, but there are several in the UK who fit the description.

What sets Matthew apart from other superstar profs is his politics. I would describe it as sort of “RedKIP” - right-leaning on culture stuff, left on economics. Alongside this, he has also long been a Brexiter. This is why it comes as a little bit of a shock to me that Professor Goodwin is the guy who has convinced that we can rejoin the EU a lot sooner than I had previously imagined, something which I am grateful to him for.

Last week, Matthew published a piece on his Substack entitled “Why I'm sceptical of Rejoinerism” that I suggest you read in full, particularly given what I’m about to say about the article.

Unfortunately, I have to kick this off with a criticism. Here is the opening paragraph of Matthew’s piece:

“This month marks the third anniversary of Britain leaving the EU. But if you believe what you read in the newspapers and hear on certain podcasts then you might be forgiven for thinking that the country has already decided to Re-Join the EU.”

I have no idea where Matthew or any other Brexiter gets this idea from. I myself see a country in which we have two major parties, both of whom in their own way want to “Make Brexit Work”. We also have a media that tends to like to avoid talking about Brexit as much as possible and when they absolutely have to, they handle it with kids gloves and asterisks all over the place. No one in the mainstream media ever talks about rejoining the EU, not even the most hardcore Remainer.

Anyhow, that over, we get to the good stuff. “There is no doubt the shine has come off Brexit,” he says next, and then goes on a rant about how Remainers and progressives (which he seems to believe are exactly the same thing) are caught in a bubble thinking the whole country agrees with them and wants to rejoin the EU. Then he gets to the polling, which he admits looks on the surface to be pretty damning for those hoping that Britain remains outside of the European Union:

“In the latest ‘poll of polls’, which takes an average of the latest polls, Re-Join has a commanding 14-point lead over Staying Out, with 57 per cent of voters wanting to return to the EU and only 43 per cent wanting to Stay Out of the club. These poll findings then find themselves into the newspapers, commentary and viral tweets, giving everybody the impression that much of the country wants to overturn Brexit and Re-Join the club.”

However, this is simply a preamble to Matthew’s larger point. Yes, when people are asked the basic question about Rejoin or Stay Out, Rejoin has a large lead. But what if you explained to them what rejoining would actually entail? Lay out for the voters that we’d almost certainly have to take the Euro, join Schengen (meaning we’d effectively have no borders at all with the EU), freedom of movement would return (of course), any of the opt outs we used to have would be toast, and the budget rebate earned by Mrs Thatcher, gone. Surely the numbers for rejoin would come crashing down when people see what rejoin really means, right?

This isn’t academic either - if we do have another EU referendum anytime in the relatively near future, unless the government of the time is smart enough to negotiate what rejoining the EU would look like before running the next referendum (and I wouldn’t bet on any UK government being smart enough to do this), the “horrors” of what we’d have to accept would become the entire basis for the Stay Out campaign.

Matthew decided to run a poll himself doing just this - asking people if they want to Rejoin or Stay Out after explaining to them all of the things that come with rejoining the EU, at least hypothetically. He first ran one on the simple In or Out question with no explanation, as a sort of control group. This came out 56-44 to Rejoin, which is in line with other polls. Then came the bomb - all the things we’d have to swallow if we wanted to crawl back in the club. And yes, the Rejoin number shrank, of course.

To 52% Rejoin, 48% Stay Out. Yes, you read it right - even when told what rejoining the EU would entail in detail, there is still a majority in the country to rejoin the EU. Matthew tries to pass this lead for Rejoin off as “barely statistically significant” - which, given that was the very same ratio the actual Leave campaign won by in 2016 and was subsequently used by the Tory government to enact a very hard Brexit, is fairly rich - but come on. The fact that rejoin is in the lead, in early 2023, even when you tell the public what is involved in rejoining in a “worst case scenario”, is nothing short of miraculous.

For perspective, I figure the sort of numbers you should be getting for asking people if they want to rejoin the European Union, at least after you tell them about freedom of movement, paying into the budget again, open borders and everything else, is about 70-30 in favour of Staying Out. Again, that isn’t what I consider an apocalyptic number for Rejoin, just what I figure is par for the course. There is no way Rejoin should be ahead, regardless of any other factor - but that it is ahead even with all the trimmings being spelled out explicitly, again, I can’t tell you enough how huge that is.

And it has changed my mind on how soon Brexit can be reversed. Matthew Goodwin, strange as it may seem, is the person who has convinced me that instead of it taking 25 years to be a member again, the UK can be back in within a decade from now. I thought we were at least ten years away from the type of polling numbers for rejoin we’re seeing now. All Remainers should be thanking Professor Goodwin for his brilliant work.

Launching a paid newsletter

After thinking about it for a while as well as getting to a subscriber number I think can justify this move, I’m going to launch a separate, paid newsletter on Brexit issues. I would like to immediately stress, this would be in addition to my current free one, the one you are now reading, which will continue to be free to everyone.

The reason I’m doing this is I’d like to spend more time writing about Brexit, but I’d need it to be at least a little economically viable for me given I’d have to sack off other work to concentrate on it. Contrary to what Brexit trolls on Twitter might have you believe, the EU does not pay me to write anti-Brexit stuff. In fact, writing this Substack and saying what I say on Twitter about Brexit has had an overall negative effect on my income, given jobs I might have at least been in consideration for a few years ago are now tricky as I’m too '“controversial”.

Having said all that, I didn’t want to offer to do a separate paid subscription newsletter without something substantial to provide for people’s hard-earned money. That’s why I have now come up with a package I hope works for people who might want more of this kind of stuff.

What does a paid subscription get you?

With the paid subscription of £5 a month (that is the cheapest Substack allow you to offer) you will get:

1. A country by country report on how each of the remaining EU27 see post-Brexit Britain now, released piece by piece over the course of the next 18 months. I think this is key to understanding what hurdles Britain might face in looking to rejoin, not just the EU outright but even the single market or customs union. I will interview key people in each EU country and try and present the most balanced view I can from each. This is one of the main reasons I want to go to a paid subs model for some of this stuff - there will be a little bit of cost attached to researching here.

2. Sections from a book I partly wrote - and will complete for my paid subscribers over this year - entitled, How Brexit Gets Reversed. I wrote most of what I have already in 2021, and dabbled with it since. It is partly about what happened pre-referendum, during the referendum and then after it but pre-Brexit itself, with some inside stories about Farage, Vote Leave, and the Remain campaign; partly about what I think will happen in the coming decade(s) that leads to Brexit being slowly reversed; and most importantly, what pro-Europeans can do to help the process along.

   I tried to find a publishing house to publish the book, but ran into a brick wall. No one in publishing seemed to want to put out a book about Brexit, positive or negative. “No one wants to hear about Brexit, everyone in the country is sick of it”, was the steady message. I think there are parts of it that my readers would enjoy reading and might get some helpful ideas from.

3. I will provide a running technical explanation about elements of the Retained EU Law Bill and how EU law translated into UK law works - and how it does not work, which is just as important given the amount of errors typically contained in any article about the subject. This will be based on the work I did on EU-related laws and regulations with the Red Tape Initiative, which I was involved in from 2016 to 2019. I see this as being more valuable to journalists and politicians who I hope will subscribe on that basis, but I also hope this is of interest to some of you who just care about Brexit being reversed since I think this is a key area of debate.

If you are interested in becoming a paid subscriber, click here:

Thanks to everyone who becomes a paid subscriber - I promise to do my utmost to make it worth your while. And thanks as well to my free subscribers as well - you’ve helped get me to this point and I can’t thank you enough.

And as always, I’ll be back next week with the worst of Brexit.